§ 2. Less serious difficulties we may deal with at once. " A four-cornered circle is an impossibility," we are told, does not assert the actual existence of a four-cornered circle (Herbart, I. 93). But the objection is irrelevant, unless it is maintained that in every case we affirm the reality of the grammatical subject.* And this clearly is not always what we mean to assert. And such further examples as " There are no ghosts," or " This thought is an illusion," may be likewise disposed of. It is not the first form and haphazard conjunction of every proposition which represents reality. But, in every proposi tion, an analysis of the meaning will find a reality of which something else is affirmed or denied. " The nature of space excludes the connection of square and round," " The world is no place where ghosts exist," " I have an idea, but the reality it refers to is other than its meaning," — we may offer these translations as preliminary answers to a first form of attack. And when Herbart assails us with " The wrath of the Homeric gods is fearful " (I. 99), we need give no ground before such a weapon. In Homer it is so; and surely a poem, surely any imagination, surely dreams and delusions, and surely much more our words and our names are all of them facts of a certain kind. Such plain distinctions as those be tween existences of different orders 3 should never have been confused, and the paradox lies on the side of those who urge such an objection, f *Ueberweg seems to make this mistake, Loglk, §68.
fl admit that there are difficulties which for the moment we ignore. When no one reads Homer, of what subject can we predicate the wrath of his deities? Though the meaning of a term is a fact, most certain and quite undeniable, yet where is that fixed connection CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 43 And if, further, the discussion take the misleading form of an enquiry into the copula, we find merely the same misunder standings unknowingly reproduced. Wherever we predicate, we predicate about something which exists beyond the judg ment, and which (of whatever kind it may be) is real, either inside our heads or outside them. And in this way we must say that " is " never can stand for anything but " exists." * § 3. But Herbart, we shall find, is not so easily disposed of. He was not the man first uncritically to swallow the common- sense doctrine that judgment is of things, and then to stagger at the discovery that things are not words, or fall prostrate before a supposed linguistic revelation of the nature of the copula. In denying that judgment asserts a fact, he knew well what he stood on. It was no puzzle about the gram matical subject, but a difficulty as to the whole nature of truth and of ideas. We reflect about judgment, and, at first of course, we think we understand it. Our conviction is that it is concerned with fact; but we also see that it is concerned with ideas. And the matter seems at this stage quite simple. We have a junction or synthesis of ideas in the mind, and this junction expresses a similar junction of facts outside. Truth and fact are thus given to us together, the same thing, so to speak, in different hemispheres or diverse elements.
But a further reflection tends to dissipate our confidence. Judgments, we find, are the union of ideas, and truth is not found except in judgments. How then are ideas related to realities? They seemed the same, but they clearly are not so, and their difference threatens to become a discrepancy. A fact is individual, an idea is universal; a fact is substantial, to be found? Does it lie in the dictionaries when no one opens them, or in the usage when no one is employing the word? But these questions bear as hardly on fact as on legend, and on things as on names. Mathematical truths at the least hold good inside mathematics. But where are mathematics? And we all believe that arsenic poisons, but if at the moment no dose is operating, nor any one in the world is thinking of arsenic, it poisons nothing. We shall here after return to the discussion of this problem.
* The reader may consult Jordan. Die Zwcideutigkeit des Copula bei Stuart Mill, Gymn. Prog. Stuttgart, 1870; Brentano, Psychologic, Buch ii. Cap. 7. On the other side see Drobisch. Logik, §§ 55-6, Sigwart, Logik, I. 94.
44 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I an idea is adjectival; a fact is self -existent, an idea is sym bolical. Is it not then manifest that ideas are not joined in the way in which facts are? Nay the essence of an idea, the more it is considered, is seen more and more to diverge from reality. And we are confronted by the conclusion that, so far as anything is true, it is not fact, and, so far as it is fact, it can never be true. Or the same result may have a different form. A categorical judgment makes a real assertion in which some fact is afBrmed or denied. But, since no judgment can do this, they all in the end are hypothetical. They are true only of and upon a supposition. In asserting S — P I do not mean that S, or P, or their synthesis, is real. I say nothing about any union in fact. The truth of S — P means that, if I sup pose S, I am bound in that case to assert S — P. In this way all judgments are hypothetical.* The conclusion, thus urged upon us by Herbart, follows, I think, irresistibly from the premises. But the premises are not valid. Judgment, we saw in the foregoing chapter, can not consist in the synthesis of ideas. And yet it will repay us to pause awhile, and to enlarge on the consequences of this erroneous doctrine. To see clearly that, if judgment is the union of ideas, there then can be no categorical judgment, is a very great step in the understanding of Logic. And, through the next few sections, we shall endeavour to make this con clusion plain.
§4. The contrast and comparison of reality and truth no doubt involve very ultimate principles. To enquire what is fact, is to enter at once on a journey into metaphysics, the end of which might not soon be attained. For our present purpose we must answer the question from a level not much above that of common sense.4 And the account which repre sents the ordinary view, and in which perhaps we may most of us agree, is something of this sort.
The real is that which is known in presentation or intuitive knowledge. It is what we encounter in feeling or perception. Again it is that which appears in the series of events that occur in space and time. It is that once more which resists our wills; a thing is real if it exercises any kind of force or * Herbart, Werke, I. 92. He refers here to Wolff, by whom, in this point, he had been partially anticipated. Cf. Fichte, Werke, I. 69, 93.
CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 45 compulsion, or exhibits necessity. It is briefly what acts and maintains itself in existence. And this last feature seems connected with former ones. We know of no action, unless it shows itself by altering the series of either space or time, or both together; 5 and again perhaps there is nothing which appears unless it acts. But the simplest account, in which the others possibly are all summed up, is given in the words, The real is self-existent. And we may put this otherwise by saying, The real is what is individual.
It is the business of metaphysics to subject these ideas to a systematic examination. We must content ourselves here with taking them on trust, and will pause merely to point out a common misunderstanding. It is a mistake to suppose that " The real is individual " means either that the real is abstractly simple, or is merely particular. Internal diversity does not exclude individuality, and still less is a thing made self-existent by standing in a relation of exclusion to others. Metaphysics can prove that, in this sense, the particular is furthest removed from self -existence. The individual is so far from being merely particular that, in contrast with its own internal diversity, it is a true universal (cf. Chap. VI.). Nor is this a paradox. We are accustomed to speak of, and believe in, realities which exist in more than one moment of time or portion of space. Any such reality would be an identity which appears and remains the same under differences; and it therefore would be a real universal.* § 5. Such, we may say, are some of the points which con stitute reality. And truth has not one of them. It exists, as such, in the world of ideas. And ideas, we have seen, are merely symbols. They are general and adjectival, not sub stantive and individual. Their essence lies within their mean ing and beyond their existence. The idea is the fact with its existence disregarded, and its content mutilated. It is but a portion of the actual content cut off from its reality, and *The following reflection may interest the reader. If space and time are continuous, and if all appearance must occupy some time or space — and it is not hard to support both these theses — we can at once proceed to the conclusion, no mere particular exists. Every phenom enon will exist in more times or spaces than one; and against that diversity will be itself an universal.
46 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I used with a reference to something else. No idea can be real.
If judgment is the synthesis of two ideas, then truth con sists in the junction of unreals. When I say, Gold is yellow, then certainly some fact is present to my mind. But universal gold and universal yellowness are not realities, and, on the other hand, what images 6 of yellow and gold I actually pos sess, though as psychical facts they have real existence, are unfortunately not the facts about which I desired to say any thing. We have seen (Chap. I.) that I do not mean, This image of gold is in my mind joined psychically with this other image of yellow. I mean that, quite apart from my mental facts, gold in general has a certain kind of colour. I strip away certain parts from the mental facts, and, combining these adjectival remnants, I call the synthesis truth.
But reality is not a connection of adjectives, nor can it so be represented. Its essence is to be substantial and individual. But can we reach self -existence and individual character by manipulating adjectives and putting universals together? If not, the fact is not given directly in any truth whatsoever. It can never be stated categorically. And yet, because adjec tives depend upon substantives, the substantive is implied. Truth will then refer to fact indirectly. The adjectives of truth presuppose a reality, and in this sense all judgment will rest on a supposal. It is all hypothetical; itself will confess that what directly it deals with, is unreal.
§ 6. More ordinary considerations might perhaps have led us to anticipate this result. The common-sense view of facts outside us passing over into the form of truth within us, or copying themselves in a faithful mirror, is shaken and per plexed by the simplest enquiries. What fact is asserted in negative judgments? Has every negation I choose to invent a real counterpart in the world of things? Does any logical negation, as such, correspond to fact? Consider again hypo thetical judgments. // something is, then something else fol lows, but should neither exist, would the statement be false? It seems just as true without facts as with them, and, if so, what fact can it possibly assert? The disjunctive judgment will again perplex us. " A is b or c " must be true or false, but how in the world can a fact exist as that strange ambiguity CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 47 " b or c?" We shall hardly find the flesh and blood alterna tive 'which answers to our " or."
If we think these puzzles too technical or sought out, let us take more obvious ones. Have the past and the future we talk of so freely any real existence? Or let us try a mere ordinary categorical affirmative judgment, " Animals are mortal." This seems at first to keep close to reality; the junction of facts seems quite the same as the junction of ideas. But the experience we have gained may warn us that, if ideas are adjectives, this can not be the case. If we are uncon vinced, let us go on to examine. " Animals " seems perhaps to answer to a fact, since all the animals who exist are real. But, in " Animals are mortal," is it only the animals now existing that we speak of? Do we not mean to say that the animal born hereafter will certainly die? The complete col lection of real things is of course the same fact as the real things themselves, but a difficulty arises as to future individ uals. And, apart from that, we scarcely in general have in our minds a complete collection. We mean, " Whatever is an animal will die," but that is the same as // anything is an animal then it is mortal. The assertion really is about mere hypothesis; it is not about fact.
In universal judgments we may sometimes understand that the synthesis of adjectives, which the judgment expresses, is really found in actual existence. But the judgment does not say this. It is merely a private supposition of our own. It arises partly from the nature of the case, and partly again from our bad logical tradition. The fact that most adjectives we conjoin in judgment can be taken as the adjectives of existing things, leads us naturally to expect that this will always be the case. And, in the second place, a constant ambiguity arises from the use of " all " in the subject. We write the universal in the form " All animals," and then take it to mean each actual animal, or the real sum of existing animals. But this would be no more an universal judgment than " A B and C are severally mortal." And we mean noth ing like this. In saying " All animals," if we think of a collec tion, we never for a moment imagine it complete; we mean also " Whatever besides may be animal must be mortal too." In universal judgments we never mean " all." What we mean 48 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I is "any," and "whatever," and "whenever." But these involve " if."
We may see this most easily by a simple observation. If actual existence were really asserted, the judgment would be false if the existence failed. And this is not the case. It would be a hazardous assertion that, supposing all animal life had ceased, mortality would at once be predicated falsely, and, with the re-appearance of animal existence, would again become true. But cases exist where no doubt is possible. " All persons found trespassing on this ground will be prose cuted," is too often a prophecy, as well as a promise. But it is not meant to foretell, and, though no one trespasses, the statement may be true. " All triangles have their angles equal to two right angles " would hardly be false if there were no triangles. And, if this seems strange, take the case of a chiliagon. Would statements about chiliagons cease to be true, if no one at the moment were thinking of a chiliagon? We can hardly say that, and yet where would any chiliagons exist? There surely must be scientific propositions, which unite ideas not demonstrable at the moment in actual existence. But can we maintain that, if the sciences which produce these became non-existent, these judgments would have ipso facto become false, as well as unreal?
The universal judgment is thus always hypothetical. It says " Given one thing you will then have another," and it says no more. No truth can state fact.
§ 7. This result is however not easy to put up with. For, if the truth is such, then all truths, it would seem, are no better than false. We can not so give up the categorical judgment, for, if that is lost, then everything fails. Let us make a search and keep to this question, Is there nowhere to be found a categorical judgment? And it seems we can find one. Universal judgments were merely hypothetical, because they stated, not individual substantives, but connections of adjectives. But in singular judgments the case is otherwise. Where the subject, of which you affirm categorically, is one individual, or a set of individuals, your truth expresses fact. There is here no mere adjective and no hypothesis.
These judgments are divisible into three great classes.7 And the distinction will hereafter be of great importance, (i) CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 49 We have first those judgments which make an assertion about that which I now perceive, or feel, or about some portion of it. " I have a toothache," " There is a wolf," " That bough is broken." In these we simply analyze the given, and may there fore call them by the name of Analytic judgments of sense * Then (ii) we have Synthetic judgments of sense, which state either some fact of time or space, or again some quality of the matter given, which I do not here and 'now directly perceive. " This road leads to London," " Yesterday it rained," " To morrow there will be full moon." They are synthetic because they extend the given through an ideal construction, and they all, as we shall see, involve an inference. The third class (Hi), on the other hand, have to do with a reality which is never a sensible event in time. " God is a spirit," " The soul is a sub stance." We may think what we like of the validity of these judgments, and may or may not decline to recognize them in metaphysics. But in logic they certainly must have a place.
§ 8. But, if judgment is the union of two ideas, we have not so escaped. And this is a point we should clearly recog nize. Ideas are universal, and, no matter what it is that we try to say and dimly mean, what we really express and succeed in asserting, is nothing individual. For take the analytic judgment of sense. The fact given us is singular, it is quite unique; but our terms are all general, and state a truth which may apply as well to many other cases. In " I have a toothache" both the I and the toothache are mere generalities. The actual toothache is not any other toothache, and the actual I is myself as having this very toothache. But the truth I assert has been and will be true of all other tooth aches of my altering self. Nay " I have a toothache," is as true of another's toothache as of my own, and may be met by the assertion, " Not so, but / have one." It is in vain that we add to the original assertion " this," " here," and " now," for they are all universals. They are symbols whose meaning extends to and covers innumerable instances.
Thus the judgment will be true of any case whatsoever * These analytic and synthetic judgments must not for one moment be confounded with Kant's. Every possible judgment, we shall see hereafter, is both analytic and synthetic. Most, if not all, judgments of sense are synthetic in the sense of transcending the given.
5O THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I of a certain sort; but, if so, it can not be true of the reality; for that is unique, and is a fact, not a sort. " That bough is broken," but so are many others, and we do not say which. " This road leads to London " may be said just as well of a hundred other roads. " To-morrow it will be full moon," does not tell us what to-morrow. Hereafter it will constantly be true that, on the day after this day, there will be a full moon. And so, failing in all cases to state the actual fact, we state something else instead. What is true of all does not express this one. The assertion sticks for ever in the adjectives; it does not reach the substantive. And adjectives unsupported float in the air; their junction with reality is supposed and not asserted. So long as judgments are confined to ideas, their reference to fact is a mere implication. It is presupposed outside the assertion, which is not strictly true until we qualify it by a suppressed condition. As it stands, it both fails as a singular proposition, and is false if you take it as a strict universal (cf. §62 foil.).8 § 9. But judgment, as we saw in the foregoing Chapter, is not confined to ideas, and can not by any means consist in their synthesis. The necessity for two ideas is a mere delusion, and, if before we judged we had had to wait for them, we certainly should never have judged at all. And the necessity for the copula is a sheer superstition. Judgments can exist without any copula and with but one idea.
In the simplest judgment an idea is referred to what is given in perception, and it is identified therewith as one of its adjectives. There is no need for an idea to appear as the subject, and, even when it so appears, we must distinguish the fact from grammatical show.9 It is present reality which is the actual subject, and the genuine substantive of the ideal content. We shall see hereafter that, when " this " " here " and " now " seem to stand as subjects, the actual fact which appears in perception is the real subject, to which these phrases serve to direct our attention. But of this in the sequel; we have seen already, and have further to see, that all judgments predicate their ideal content as an attribute of the real which appears in presentation.
It is from this point of view that we must resume the discussion. Standing on this basis, we must examine afresh CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 5!
the various judgments which have passed before us, and must ask for their meaning and further validity. Some difficulties in our search for categorical judgments may have already disappeared; but others as formidable must perhaps be awaited. And, if we come to the result that all truth in the end is true of reality, we must not expect to maintain that doctrine in its crude acceptation.
§ 10. Our first movement however must be towards a definition. A phrase we have used was designedly am biguous. Are we to hold that the real, which is the ultimate subject, and which, as we said, appears in perception, is identical with the merely momentary appearance? We shall see that this can not be, and that such a view could not possibly account for the facts. At present we may offer a preliminary argument against this mistake.
The subject which appears in the series of time, and to which we attribute our ideas as predicates, must itself be real. And, if real, it must not be purely adjectival. On the contrary it must be self-existent and individual. But the particular phenomenon, the momentary appearance, is not individual, and is so not the subject which we use in judgment.
§11. We naturally think that the real, at least as we know it, must be present. Unless I come into contact with it directly, I can never be sure of it. Nothing in the end but what I feel can be real, and I can not feel anything unless it touches me. But nothing again can immediately encounter me save that which is present.10 If I have it not here and now, I do not have it at all.
" The present is real "; this seems indubitable. And are we to say that the momentary appearance is therefore real? This indeed would be mistaken. If we take the real as that which is confined to a single " here " or a single " now " (in this sense making it particular), we shall have questions on our hands we shall fail to dispose of. For, beside the diffi culties as to the truth of all universal judgments, we are threatened with the loss of every proposition which extends beyond the single instant. Synthetic judgments must at once be banished if the real is only the phenomenon of a moment. Nothing either past or future in time, nor any space I do not 52 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I directly perceive, can be predicated as adjectives of our one " now " and " here." All such judgments would be false, for they would attribute to the existent qualities which con fessedly are non-existent, or would place the real as one member in a series of utter unrealities.
But perhaps we feel we may escape this consequence; or at all events feel so sure of our premise that we can not give it up. " The real is confined to one here or one now." But supposing this true, are we sure we know what it is we under stand by our " now " and " here "? For time and extension seem continuous elements; the here is one space with the other heres round it; and the now flows ceaselessly and passes for ever from the present to the past.
We may avoid this difficulty, we may isolate the time we call the present, and fix our now as the moment which is, and has neither past, nor future, nor transition in itself. But here we fall into a hopeless dilemma. This moment which we take either has no duration, and in that case it turns out no time at all; or, if it has duration, it is a part of time, and is found to have transition in itself.
If the now in which the real appears is purely discrete, then first we may say that, as characterized by exclusion, the phenomenon, if apparent, is not self-subsistent, and so not real. But apart from that objection, and to return to our dilemma, the now and the here must have some extension. For no part of space or time is a final element. We find that every here is made up of heres, and every now is resolvable into nows. And thus the appearance of an atomic now could not show itself as any one part of time. But, if so, it could never show itself at all. Or, on the other hand, if we say the appearance has duration, then, like all real time, it has suc cession in itself, and it would not be the appearance of our single now.* From all which it is clear that a momentary ap pearance will not give us the subject of which we are in search.
* It is the business of metaphysics to prove these points at length. If time consists of discrete parts, it is hard to see how the fact of succession can possibly be explained, unless time be taken between these parts of time. And that would lead to untenable conclusions. But it is the fact of change which shows that time is continuous. The rate of change, the number of events in every part of time, may, CHAP. II FORMS OF JUDGMENT 53 § 12. It is a mistake to suppose that the present is a part of time, indivisible and stationary, and that here and now can be solid and atomic. In one sense of the word the present is no time. Itself no part of the process, it is a point we take within the flow of change. It is the line that we draw across the stream, to fix in our minds the relations of one successive event to another event. " Now," in this sense, stands for " simultaneous with "; it signifies not existence but bare po sition in the series of time. The reality is not present in the sense of given in one atomic moment.
What we mean, when we identify presence with reality, is something different. The real is that with which I come into immediate contact, and the content of any part of time, any section of the continuous flow of change, is present to me if I directly encounter it. What is given in a perception, though it change in my hands, is now and here if only I perceive it. And within that perception any aspect or part, which I spe cially attend to, is specially present, is now and here in another sense than the rest of that content. The present is the filling of that duration in which the reality appears to me directly; and there can be no part of the succession of events so small or so great, that conceivably it might not appear as present.
In passing we may repeat and may trace the connection of those shades of meaning we have found in " presence." (i) Two events in time are now to one another, if both are given simultaneously in my series, (ii) Since the real appears in the series of time, the effort to find it both present and existmg within that series, creates the fiction of the atomic now. (iii) If the real can never exist in time, but only appear there, then that part of the series in which it touches me is my present, (iv) And this suggests the reflection that presence is really the negation of time, and never can properly be given in the so far as we know, be increased indefinitely; and this means that in every part. of time more than one event may take place. If the parts be discrete, then not only will motion imply that a thing is in several places in one time (and this is a fact), but also (which is absurd) that throughout all these places no time elapses, that they are strictly contemporaneous. I should be glad to enter into the discussion at length, but the subject cannot properly be treated by logic.
54 THE PRINCIPLES OF LOGIC BOOK I series. It is not the time that can ever be present, but only the content.